71. Everything You Need To Know When You Are 10

Everything You Need To Know When You Are 10. Kirsten Miller. 2021. 160 pages. [Source: Review copy]

First sentence: I bet you've been looking forward to this moment for ages.

Kirsten Miller has written a guide book for ten year olds. (This is a follow up to her books Everything You Need To Know When You Are 8 and Everything You Need To Know When You Are 9. I haven't read either of those. She does refer back to these a little bit reminding her (loyal) readers that they learned how to do something in such and such book). It's a mix of the super-practical, practical, and impractical. In this guide, readers will learn some life coping skills (like how to deal with anger, disappointment, fear, etc.), some technical skills (like what to do when your toilet is overflowing), some people skills (advice on friendship, small talk, crushes, etc.).

Like any general guide book, the author makes some presumptions/assumptions about her audience. Like how being ten means you're allowed to use the stove, allowed to babysit, allowed to walk places on your own, allowed to stay at home by yourself without a babysitter, etc.

The arrangement is a bit haphazard, a bit all over the place. There isn't a table of contents.

I would say for sure there's ten to twenty pages of solid, valuable information that truly is something a ten year would need to know. The rest is more fluff or filler. Like how to make fake vomit, how to make your arm pits fart, dares for eating bugs, gross sandwiches, and backyard salads made of edible plants/weeds. There's a list of fake curse words. The crafts and pranks I could have done without completely. But then again, it might be an actual ten year old's favorite part????

I am not the target audience--obviously.

© 2021 Becky Laney of Young Readers